Covid-19

[Jerome]

Going to be a million per day plus at this rate.

[CRAZY-HORSE]

looks like Santa has been vaccinated: https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/us/he-is-...d=msedgntp

[CRAZY-HORSE]

77,000,000 now....
COVID-19 Stats - Realtime coronavirus statistics with charts (epidemic-stats.com)

[Jerome]

35,928 new cases in the UK in 1 day. In deep shit over there. Apparently down to some new strain of the virus which is spreading like wildfire. Hospitals are going to be swamped. The pace is picking up here as well. Not good.

[CRAZY-HORSE]

i saw a news article on BBC World earlier, had some medical expert from the UK he was saying and i paraphrase:

"Australia is the only Western country that has contained the virus and thats because of threee reasons, the public listen to official advice, they lockdown immediatley when an outbreak occurs and they reacted as soon as the virus initially took hold"

he went on to say:
"on Saturday, after a month of no new cases Sydney had 38 cases they locked down Sydney and other States closed their borders from accepting people from New South Wales, meanwhile here in England we had 35,000 new cases, the Government again talked about full lockdown and people complained about not wanting pubs to shut so they could get beer over Christmas"

This is not going to end unless people start thinking about someone other than theirselves.

like i said before,
cafes, cinemas, gyms, social gatherings have been back to normal here for several months because the general public followed official advice.
yes, we still have to register when we enter public places via a Covid tracing app and generally expected to use hand sanitiser when entering these places also but its a small price to pay for a Covid free society until the vaccine is available to the general public.

[Jerome]

'This is not going to end unless people start thinking about someone other than themselves.'

Not going to happen CH - the only time people are going to wake up is when THEY get it. And then there are STILL people who think it's just flu??!!?? Have they not seen the articles about people having limbs amputated as a result of C-19. Not to mention the fatalities. If people think it's more important to have beer rather than protecting themselves and others then they deserve to get the damn virus. Good God how stupid can people get? Nuts!

[CRAZY-HORSE]

that new strain of Covid that you mentioned Jerome has now surfaced in Denmark, Netherlands and here in Australia.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/cov...d=msedgntp

then i find this article which shows Belgium and Italy also:
https://www.msn.com/en-au/health/medical...d=msedgntp

[Ruby]

“South Africa, through the World Health Organisation-led (WHO) COVAX facility, has committed to securing 5.7 million doses to cover at least 10% of the population at a cost of more than R2-billion. The Department of Health (DoH) envisages that a vaccine will be available by mid-2021.”

Then, aside from the complex issue of which 10% of the population will get the vaccine, there is the question of administrative equipment, not to mention storage. Vaccine hopes are false hopes IMHO - here at any rate – by the time they are eventually rolled out, most people will either have had the virus or it will be ineffective due to these new variant strains which we also have now, driving our second wave. (I know it’s not the same thing at all, but we have a similar problem with TB. You can be immunised against the regular strain but not the multi-drug resistant TB. Nothing can stop that. Last year’s TB deaths in South Africa = 58,000.)

I think we’re going to be living with Covid-19 for a very long time. Even countries that think they've banished it are going to have to face that it will creep in somehow, somewhere, especially since it now appears you can be pre-symptomatic and infectious up to 3 days before manifesting any symptoms.

There are some strange anomalies too. The daughter of someone I know tested positive for C-19 while living in the same house, in close proximity to both her parents and 90 year old grandmother, none of whom has contracted it, which seems really weird. Still so much that is not understood. Fascinating that out of 160 000 000 tests less than 87 000 Chinese have tested positive - India, by comparison has done 162 000 000 tests with a positive result of over 10 000 000??!! 

We are very much a combination of first and third world. The majority of our population simply cannot practice social distancing – it’s a physical impossibility, and it's all very well telling people to wash their hands, but there are around 4m people living in urban informal settlements who do not have direct access to running water – they have to fill up buckets from a communal outside tap and use communal toilets. Then there is transport and the dreaded mini-bus taxis. No way those are only going to carry passengers at half capacity, and people will use them because they need to get to work or quite literally starve, and their options are severely limited because the bus and train lines are inefficient (not to mention the taxi mafia causing chaos when they detect competition). That said, the primary cause of the spread seems to be social gatherings, parties and other events in confined spaces – and hospitals, which is just terrible!! Health care workers are having a horrible time. They are truly amazing beings.

On the whole, I'd say most people that I see in my daily life are compliant in wearing masks and sanitizing at shops etc., but it's also clear that fatigue has set in and that there is less care than before. Who knows where it will all end?? 

Just seen a communication about flight cancellations – seems like by tomorrow there may be a European travel ban in place. Swissair, Lufthansa and Turkish Airlines pulling out of flights to SA, so far.

https://www.nicd.ac.za/new-variant-of-sa...iThpv_D1U0

[Jerome]

China is lying. Pure and simple. There is no way in hell you can have 160 million people tested and only end up with 87 000 cases, which by the way is at least 7000 less than what they reported at the start of the year. And there are plenty of informal settlements in China too. As to why some people contract it and some don't I think that is just down to individual genetic makeup. Apparently some blood groups are more susceptible than others as well. A positive is most susceptible (like me). A lot of people in Ireland cannot even tell you their blood type - they simply don't know or have never been tested. It's like the old blood pressure thing. Blacks are most susceptible, whites are in the middle and asians are at the low end of the spectrum due mainly to their diet.

I need to get back to SA sometime this year coming to visit my mom but it's not looking like there are going to be flights at this rate. It's all just one big bloody mess. And all as a result of man's own meddling.

But to end on a funny note - I watched some movie or TV program where the female partner was complaining about her male partner's poor sexual performance 'You call that good sex - I've been vaccinated slower!!' LOL 

(can't remember the series/movie or the exact words)

[CRAZY-HORSE]

But to end on a funny note - I watched some movie or TV program where the female partner was complaining about her male partner's poor sexual performance 'You call that good sex - I've been vaccinated slower!!' LOL 

(can't remember the series/movie or the exact words)

that wasnt on TV mate...
BTW, was that your drone hovering outside our bedroom window last night?